F is for Fingers (Body Folktales)

This year, my A to Z Challenge theme is Body Folktales. Enjoy!

(Sorry, this image was low hanging fruit. Explanation here.)

Fingers, surprisingly, play a very dominant role in folktales. I had an abundance of stories to choose from, so here is a selection of the most interesting ones:

The Finger (Jewish tale)

If you have seen Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, this story will be familiar to you. You might even know it from Clarissa Pinkola Estés' Women who run with the wolves, although she has changed the story significantly from its folklore versions.

Joking around with his friends in the woods, a young man puts an engagement ring on a finger sticking out of the ground. Later on, when he is preparing for his wedding, a demon woman (or a corpse) suddenly appears with the ring on her finger, claiming to be his first bride. The case is brought before a rabbi, who proclaims that the demon can't claim a mortal as her husband, and declares a divorce.

There also a lesser known version of this tale, called The demon in the tree. In this one, a boy puts a ring on a finger sticking out of a tree's trunk, and unwittingly marries a demon. The demon kills all his brides, until the third one manages to survive. Not only that, but she comes to an agreement with the demon, first appeasing her with food, and then sharing her husband with her for one hour each day. After seven years, the demon leaves them alone for good.

(You can find other versions of this story here and here.)

The legend of Raja Nala (India)

Raja Nala makes the mistake of declaring that Truth is more important than Luck - and the goddess of luck, Lakshmi, abandons him. He loses everything in short order, and goes through many adventures until he is restored to his kingdom. Along the way, his son becomes engaged to a princess, but when he grows up, Raja Nala decides to marry him to two nymphs instead. The true bride tries everything she can to get her betrothed back, and the prince finally decides to elope with her. However, his wives are so jealous that they sleep every night holding his fingers in their mouth. The prince tricks them by making sheaths out of bark for his fingers, and he manages to quietly slip away.

(Other source here.)

The queen and the cobra (India)

A dog gives birth to two human girls, and raises them in the jungle. In time, the girls meet two princes and marry them, moving into the city. When the dog-mother comes visiting, one daughter is happy to receive her but the other is not. They get tangled in a web of lies and mistakes, until the kind princess wants to kill herself by sticking her finger in a cobra's mouth. Her finger dislodges a splinter in the snake's throat, and the grateful animal rewards her greatly for the help.

The ring (Spain)

This is a folktale version of Odysseus' adventure with the cyclops, but with a girl as the hero. At the end of the story the blinded giant tricks her into wearing a ring that always tells him where she is; to save her life and get away, the girl cuts off her own finger and throws it off a mountain.

Abram and Nimrod (Iran)

This legend is a Persian variant of some stories that may be familiar from the Bible. King Nimrod is told by fortune-tellers that a child will eclipse his own power, so he orders all newborns to be killed. A woman, Adna, hides her child in a cave. Whenever she visits to nurse him, she finds him suckling on his own fingers - one of which produces milk, and the other produces honey. The boy named Abram grows up fast, and soon faces King Nimrod himself.

A ladder of fingers

This is a motif (F848.2), rather than a single tale. There are many fairy tales and fairy tale variants where someone (usually a girl) cuts off her fingers to make a ladder to reach her goal. In a German tale, a girl seeking her brothers on top of a glass mountain cuts off her little finger to create the last step on her climb. In the Grimm version of the same, she uses her little finger to open the door. In a tale from Silesia, it's a boy looking for his sister who cuts off his finger to climb the mountain.

The other tale type that often contains this motif is the Magic Flight, where the hero has to complete impossible tasks with the help of his bride. In the Breton folktale of The Maiden in White, the hero has to climb a slippery tower and retrieve a dove. His bride tells him to cut her into pieces and boil her bones, which he then uses as a ladder. After, he puts her together again, but misses her little toe. Later on, de recognizes her in a challenge by looking at her foot. In The Green Man of Eggum from Newfoundland, the hero has to gt a golden ring off a glass pole fifty feet high. His bride tells him to hit her with an ax, and her bones turn into a ladder. On the way down he steps on a rung too hard, and her little finger breaks, becoming crooked. In the Welsh Traveler version of the same (The Green Man of Noman's Land), the girl wishes her fingers to become a ladder, and the hero breaks her little finger by stepping over it. The motif is very common in Celtic cultures, and has traveled over to America as well.

The same motif also appears in a German variant of East of the Sun, West of the Moon. The woman seeking her enchanted husband (a white wolf instead of a white bear) cuts off her finger to scale the glass mountain.

There are also many Christian legends about saints lighting things up with their fingers.

There are more stories that I could think of, but it's time to move on to the next letter.

Do any other examples come to mind?

StorySpotting: Body and soul mix-and-match (Locke & Key)

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Locke & Key, in my opinion, is a seriously underrated show (I haven't read the comics but I hear they are good too). With the new season out, they gave me multiple things to Story Spot.

Where was the story spotted?

Season 3, episodes 4-6.

What happens?

The basic premise of Locke & Key is about an old house that hides various old keys, each with its own magical property. The Ghost Key has been a staple since Season 1. It essentially opens a door that separates one's soul from their body when they walk through. It has been used in various creative ways over the course of the show.

In this season Dodge, the demon who has been the main heroes' arch nemesis, manages to use the door to knock the young boy Bode's soul out of his body. She then leaves her own mortal shell, and takes over the boy's body instead. Bode, left as a floating ghost, eventually manages to regain his own body by projecting his soul into a sparrow, and then transforming back into human shape. (Complicated, I know, but kinda genius).

What's the story?

The whole body-snatching-taking-refuge-in-a-bird thing is actually one of the creepiest pieces of folklore I have ever encountered. And as I looked into it again, it seemed a lot more common than I had believed. It even has a couple of Thompson motif numbers: E725.1 - Soul leaves the body and enters an animal's, and K1175 - Minister dupe raja into entering body of a dead parrot, then enters raja's body. And yes, that latter one is hella specific.

The first time I encountered this trope was in a collection of Tibetan folktales titled Tales of the Golden Corpse. The tale of The Travelling Spirit was about two friends, a prince and a minister's son, who went to school together. The prince was lazy, but the other lad learned the secret art of projecting his soul out of his body (known as phowa). Jealous that the minister's son might upstage him, the prince tricked his friend into showing off his skills - and destroyed the unattended body. Seeking a new place, the boy's lost soul entered an old woman's dead parrot, reanimating it. Later on, the parrot managed to catch up to the prince, and tricked him into falling out of a window... And then the minister's son's soul entered the prince's empty body, and walked away home.

Excellent creepy revenge ending.

As I was reading my way around the world, I encountered this trope again in a collection from Thailand, in a tale titled The Weaverbird Princess. In this story, a silent princess is promised to the suitor who can make her talk. A prince comes along with his mentor, both of them versed in the art of projecting their soul. The mentor projects his soul into various objects in the princess' room, and the prince has conversations with the objects, telling them clever stories. The princess can't help but interject, and thus the prince wins her hand. 

Later on, the prince goes to the forest with his mentor, and, seeing a dead deer, decides to project his soul into the animal and go exploring. He trusts his body to his mentor. However, the evil mentor in turn takes over the prince's abandoned body, burns his own, and goes home to take the prince's place. The prince, not finding a body to return to, transfers himself into a dead parrot. He flies home and tells his wife what happened. The princess manages to trick the mentor into leaving the body and transferring into a goat to show off. The prince thus gets back into his body, and kills the goat in revenge.

Once I started pulling on the king-in-the-dead-parrot thread, a whole lot of other tales came tumbling out. 

There is one in the Turkish story collection titled The history of the forty vezirs, where the evil vezir, instead of burning his own body, puts a slave's soul into it for safekeeping (and the king, while in parrot form, also judges some court cases). Interestingly, in this version the queen recognizes that her husband is not behaving like himself, and refuses to sleep with him.

There is also a version from Pakistan in this book, where the king takes on the parrot's body to pick mangos for his queen. The queen, who is aware of the evil servant's soul in her husband's body from the get-go, devises a clever plan to trick the soul into a lamb's body.

The tale also appears in The Three Princes of Serendip, the English translation of the Italian translation of a medieval Persian tale collection. You can read the story about The Emperor who turned into a parrot here. Once again, the wife's suspicion plays an important part in restoring her husband to his body. Added bonus: the Emperor uses his body-switching ability to travel his kingdom in the disguise of birds, and right wrongs.

Another version of the story can be found in Hatim's Tales, a book of Kashmiri stories collected from storyteller Hatim Tilwon in 1896. The fun part of this one is that the vezir loses the king's stolen body when he goes hunting, and decides to inhabit a bear for greater efficiency. The king then shoots the bear, saying "we can't have a bear for a vezir"... The tale also appears in other Kashmiri collections. It even has a variation in the famous Ocean of the Streams of Stories. Here, a person takes over a recently deceased king's body, but a minister suspects the change. Still, the minister decides an impostor is better than the child heir, and makes sure the soul doesn't have another body to return to. Now this would make a great movie...

In India, the story is known as The Metamorphoses of King Vikramaditya (you can read it in two versions in this volume of North Indian Notes and Queries). In this one, the parrot ends up at his father-in-law's house, judging court cases. Once he actually judges the case of a woman whose husband has been replaced by a shapeshifting dev. Eventually his wife (who is suspicious of her "husband") hears of the parrot and discovers the truth. In the second variant, the evil servant is tricked into the body of a goat and then beheaded, and the head of the goat still laughs and weeps as it's hung in the bazaar.

(I even found a popular comic book adaptation of this story from India.)

A distant relative to this motif is a story from Melanesia, where an evil spirit pushes a girl off a cliff, and takes over her body and identity.

Conclusion

So here we have a folktale type that spans a continent at least, and also several centuries in time, all the way from 11th century Kashmir to 21st century Netflix. Traveling souls and body-snatchers are a rich topic for people to think about. It probably has something to do with our mortality...

(Fun fact: I originally started working on this post when I was watching The 100)

O is for Onyx (Gemstone Folklore)

Welcome to the 2022 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Gemstone Folklore. Because I love stories about shiny things. Read the introduction to the project here.

ONYX

Onyx is a silicate mineral, a variety of chalcedony that is usually known for its deep black color, or black and white parallel layers. People associate it with the color black, although it also exists in various other colors.

Rostam and Sohrab

Persian legend

There is a story in the Persian Book of Kings about the great hero Rostam and his son. One day, Rostam goes out hunting, and his famous horse Rakhsh is stolen. Searching for the horse he ventures into a city where a princess named Tahmineh falls in love with him. They marry, and on their wedding day Rostam gives her an onyx armband "that was known unto all the world" as one of his treasures. He tells the princess that if they have a daughter, put the onyx in her hair ("it will shield her from evil"), and if they have a son, let him wear it as an armband.

The princess gives birth to a son and names him Sohrab. When he grows up, he decides to lead an army to Iran to overthrow the king and put his father Rostam on the throne. The king of Turan, his mother's country, has long been an enemy of Iran, so the king supports the venture (although they are mutually planning to overthrow the other after the campaign). Sohrab takes a castle on the border after an epic fight with the woman warrior Gurdafrid. Hearing the news of the attack, the king of Iran sends out Rostam to deal with the invaders.

Rostam sneaks into Sohrab's camp, but doesn't recognize the young warrior as his son. Sohrab, in turn, asks about the enemy, but he is not told how to recognize Rostam, because people fear he'd challenge the hero to a duel. Sohrab issues a challenge to the king, who sends out Rostam to duel in his name. Rostam feels sorry for the young warrior and tries to avoid the duel, hiding his true identity to lessen the challenge. Tragedy ensues: not recognizing each other, Rostam and Sohrab fight to the death, and though they are almost evenly matched, in the end Rostam breaks his son's back. Dying, Sohrab asks about his father, and Rostam realizes too late that he's killed his own son - proven when he opens Sohrab's armor, and finds the onyx armband underneath.

Sources: Read this part of the epic here. This motif of the fated duel between father and son also appears in many other epic traditions (such as Cú Chulainn's legend, or the Dietrich cycle).

What are your thoughts on black gemstones as jewelry?

I is for Iranian Turquoise (Gemstone Folklore)

Welcome to the 2022 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Gemstone Folklore. Because I love stories about shiny things. Read the introduction to the project here.

TURQUOISE

Turquoise is the national stone of Iran, and has played an important role in Persian culture for centuries. The turquoise mines in Nishapur have been mined for almost two thousand years.

The Cup of Jamshid

Iran

There is a magic cup that keeps appearing in Iranian legends over and over again, and is either carved of turquoise, or is studded with turquoise. It is generally known as the Cup of Jamshid, but the story is a bit more complex than that. It also doesn't help that the cup, which was used for scrying, is often translated to English as a "crystal ball." The following legends are mostly sourced from the Persian Book of Kings, written by Ferdowsi in the 10th century.

Jamshid was a legendary Persian king of the Pishdadian dynasty. Under his seven hundred year long (!) rule the realm thrived. He is credited with a whole lot of cultural inventions (such as blacksmithing, weaving and sewing, medicine, navigation, etc.), and a long period of peace. Incidentally, he is also credited with inventing the mining of precious stones:

He searched among the rocks for stones whose lustre
Attracted him and came on many a jewel,
As rubies, amber, silver, gold. Jamshid
Unlocked their doors and brought them forth by spells.

Legend claims the seven-ringed scrying cup first belonged to him. Sadly, Jamshid grew too vain and proud, and declared that he alone was responsible for the prosperity of the people, denying God. He lost his royal grace, and was eventually overthrown and killed by Zahhak, a famous villain of the Book of Kings.

Time passes, a new dynasty rises, and with it, a new king: Kay Khosrow, of the Kayanian dynasty. He is also a wise and peaceful ruler. He uses the scrying cup in the story of Bijan and Manjeh. Bijan, an Iranian hero from Kay Khosrow's court, goes to Turan to fight some wild boards, but falls in love with the Turanian king's daughter, who smuggles him into the harem. When he is found, the king chains him in a cave, and blocks the entrance with a rock. Kay Khosrow, searching for his lost hero, uses the cup (through which he can "behold the world, and see the secrets of destiny") to see all seven realms of the world, eventually finds him in the hidden cave, and sends the legendary hero Rostam to the rescue.

The cup's story continues in the age of Alexander the Great, whose adventures are recounted by another Persian poet, Nizami, in his epic the Sikandar nama. In the 17th chapter of the epic, Alexander (Sikandar) journeys to the fortress and tomb of Kay Khosrow. He sits on the great king's throne and drinks wine from his turquoise cup. He asks his advisor, the wise Balinas, to help him figure out how the cup can be used for seeing the world. There are seven lines of inscription on the inside of the cup (hence, it is often referred to as "seven ringed"). It is alleged that they referred to what effect the wine would have if the cup was filled to that line. Balinas uses the signs on the cup to devise an astrolabe, a navigation device. Which is a neat explanation for what "seeing the whole world" could really mean.

The story is still not over. According to 13th century geographer Zakariya Al-Qazwini, the 11th century sultan Alp-Arslan found among the ruins of Persepolis (Jamshid's legendary city) a turquoise cup inscribed with Jamshid's name. It had to have been a large cup, because it allegedly held two mans, which can be anywhere between 2 and 4 kg of stuff (as far as I can tell). 14th century poet Hafiz also made references to the cup and its powers of divination.

Sources: 

See the sources linked in the text. The cup has its own Wikipedia page here. There is also a great essay on the turquoise cup in this book. You can read more of the symbolism of the Cup of Jamshid here.

Other stories:

Turquoise plays an important role in many other cultures as well. There is a Tibetan folktale about an old man who uses a piece of turquoise to trick his greedy daughters-in-law. Another Tibetan folktale features a lost turquoise. Turquoise also appears in many American Indigenous (Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Zuni) myths and legends; you can read some of them here, here, here, here, here, and here. Even an ancient Egyptian story features a lost turquoise coronet.

If you could see anything in the world through the cup, what would you want to see?

Tarot Tales: K is for Kings and Knights

Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!

This post is the first one about the Minor Arcana. So, instead of one card, I'll be focusing on eight: four Kings, and four Knights. Comments will be shorter, but since Kings and Knights are very common in folklore, the selection process was also a lot easier. 

(If you have suggestions for Kings and Knights from more non-European cultures, let me know!)

CUPS (emotions, water)

King of Cups: Zal (Persia)

The King of Cups is emotionally mature, compassionate, caring, and kind. He is diplomatic, intuitive, warm-hearted, and an excellent mentor. For these reasons I chose my favorite hero from the Persian Book of Kings, Zal. Born with white hair, Zal was put out into the mountains by his father to die, but the mythical Simurgh bird raised him. As an adult, he returned to his kingdom and became a wise, level-headed and diplomatic ruler - and a kind and loving father to one of the greatest Persian heroes, Rostam. He also has a gorgeous love story.

Knight of Cups: Oisín (Ireland & Scotland)

This is my favorite guy in the deck. Romantic, creative, charming, and on top of that just as caring, kind, and compassionate as the King. He is all about beauty and love, all heart and imagination. He is the downright knight in shining armor. I chose another old favorite of mine: Oisín (or Ossian), the famous bard of Irish and Scottish legends. Oisín is the son of the legendary hero Fionn Mac Cumhail, part human, part fae. He is the odd one out of the rowdy warriors of the Fianna, more a musician and a diplomat than a fighter (although he can definitely hold his own in an adventure). He is most famous from the love story where he runs away with the Queen of the Land of Youth.

WANDS (action, fire)

King of Wands: Setuli, King of the Birds (Eswatini)

This king is THE King. He is a true leader, a great role model. He takes on challenges, defeats obstacles, makes dreams into reality. He is a visionary, all energy, action and innovation. If I was going to put Arthur in the deck, this would be him - but I wanted to pick someone less obvious. So, let me introduce you to Setuli, King of Birds, from the tales of Eswatini. He is born deaf and mute, but when his magician brother takes him into the wilderness, he meets a wise old woman and she helps him gain magic powers through his own bravery and determination. Setuli then uses his new powers to turn birds into people, and sets out on a journey. He ends up breaking a curse on another kingdom, and those people join him too; he defeats monsters and makes daring plans, and in the end he lives happily ever after as the ruler of a prosperous land. 

Knight of Wands: Astolfo (Italy)

This Knight is daring, enthusiastic, and passionate. He has a lot of energy to go around: he gets into spontaneous adventures, sweeps damsels off their feet, helps out friends, goes on quests, makes magic happen. He has as much charm as Cups, but in a less dreamy and more adventurous way. For these reasons I chose Astolfo, one of the heroes of the Italian epic Orlando Furioso. He is an English prince, one of Charlemagne's paladins, most famous for riding the first hippogriff recorded in legends! After rescuing the magic steed from a wizard, he flies it to the Moon to find the lost wits of his friend Orlando. It is quite an adventure story!

SWORDS (intellect, air)

King of Swords: Solomon (Jewish, Christian & Muslim traditions)

This King is all about wisdom, knowledge, and intellect. He makes good, impartial judgment, he is respected and trusted by everyone, and he always finds the truth. He follows logic instead of emotions, and he is good at what he does. He is also a strong authority figure. I thought the legendary King Solomon would be a good fit for this card. Recently I was doing some research on Solomon's judgment (the baby-cutting-in-half thing), and it is a lot deeper than most people realize.

Knight of Swords: Mercury Ali (1001 Nights)

Knight of Swords is a bundle of energy and intellect. He is unstoppable, always up for a challenge, good with words, and usually the smartest person in the room (sometimes annoyingly so). He is all about action and winning (I love it that Telluric Tarot symbolizes him with the coffee plant). Now, I could have picked a lot of heroes for this one, but I wanted to highlight the intellect part. So instead of a knight I chose a trickster: the infamous Mercury Ali from the 1001 Nights. He is a legendary rogue from Cairo, who travels to Bagdad and gets into an endless prank war with a clever lady named Zaynab. He goes through many adventures, sometimes fighting with wits, and sometimes with a magic spear, until he can marry his lady love.

(CW: this story has a few seriously problematic parts, but in my opinion none of them are essential to the plot, and can be easily skipped.)

PENTACLES (material things, earth)

King of Pentacles: Laurin (Germany)

This King symbolizes wealth, abundance, and material security. He is grounded, respected, traditional, and successful in making his domain flourish. He is also kind of a fatherly figure and a family man. I immediately thought King Laurin would be a good fit. In German legends he is the Dwarf king of the mountains of Tyrol. He reigns over a wealthy underground kingdom full of treasures, and has a beautiful rose garden in the mountains. He features into a long and amazing legend about the struggle between humans and Dwarves.

Knight of Pentacles: Kay the Senechal (Britain)

He is not a very knightly Knight. This guy is about hard work, planning, and practical things. He is patient, responsible, reliable, persistent, and honorable. He is also, to me, one of my favorite knights from Arthurian legends: Sir Kay the Senechal. Kay is generally known for his sharp tongue and grumpy demeanor (and for being King Arthur's mean foster brother), but behind the scenes, he is the one that keeps the lights on in Camelot. In the old Welsh legends he literally keeps everyone warm by the heat radiating from his body. He might not be a good fighter, or a romantic hero, but he keeps all of them housed, clothed, and fed. You're welcome. 

Who are your favorite heroes, kings, and knights in shining armor?

(And don't worry, we'll get to the queens too!)

Persian tales come alive (Following folktales around the world 176. - Iran)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts here, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

My Mother's Persian Stories 

Folk tales for all ages in English and Farsi

Saeid Shammass & Shaunie Shammass

Kotarim International Publishing, 2018.

The book is bilingual - English from one side, Farsi from the other - and contains 30 tales, out of which 27 were told by the author's mother in Iran. The last three stories are the author's invention, contributing to the ongoing oral tradition. There is a short introduction, but no notes or comments for the individual stories. The illustrations are not great, but the texts more than make up for them: they carry on the motifs and plots of folklore, but also show the creative storytelling of the author's mother. This is truly a book of living oral tradition.

Highlights

This is one of those rare books where I found a whole lot of intriguing new tales in one volume. The story of The bird of seven colors, for example, was a classic quest where a prince set out to find a mate for his father's lonely magic bird; he managed to break into a castle with some clever tricks, and rescue the other bird. Beebee Chaghzeh was a clever girl who got kidnapped by a witch, along with her whole family, on a cart filled with magic items. She managed to outwit the witch, rescue her family. The title of The citron princess made me think of "three oranges" tales, but I was pleasantly surprised to read a story instead where a girl, turned into a lemon by magic, was saved by a prince who slowly and carefully peeled back the lemon layers. Similarly, Hassan Ali started out as a "girl elopes with the wrong guy" tale, but here the wrong guy turned out to be a much better guy, and they even helped a cursed princess save her kingdom together.

One of my favorite stories in the book was The wheel of fortune, where a man without good fortune turned his life around by helping someone else turn their life around. There was a similarly good message in The lazy children, where three siblings refused to do any chores, until each found something they really wanted to do. The story of The jeweler and the apprentice had a heartwarming conclusion, where a grateful apprentice helped his teacher regain his wealth - in such a clever way that the old man's pride was not hurt.

The magic zucchini was a fun variant of the "donkey, table, stick" story type - especially because here the stick, instead of beating people, herded the donkey along, and showed the hero the way. On the other hand, I was surprised by the story of The selfish pussycat, where a girl didn't have genitalia, so she borrowed some for her wedding night from her cat (who had two sets)... but when the cat demanded a higher payment for the loan, she managed to get rid of her. (So many puns...).

The tales created by the author fit into the traditional lineup very well. I especially liked the last one, Blanket ears and the waq-waqs, a story about a journey to exotic places, where two groups of magical creatures managed to live peacefully together after they defeated an evil, strife-sowing witch. 

Connections

There were familiar tale types in the book too. Sometimes in new clothes, quite literally: The tale of GreenRobe was a story of a wife seeking her lost husband (similar to tales of East of the Sun, West of the Moon), following him across the changing of the seasons, until she found him and they could go home to their tree house together. There was also a "golden-haired twins" story (The little wooden horse), and a false fortune-teller (The caliph and the clown). 

The mother-in-law and the snake was similar to all the "devil's wife" stories where a loud woman chases a demon away - except here at the end of the story, the king decided she would make a great wife, and married the mother-in-law.

The tale of The two brothers was an Iranian version of the legend of the first temple (here, the brothers were rewarded by fairies). The land of darkness was the classic Alexander legend, except here we got a lot more interesting detail about the enchanted dark lands (e.g. that the ground is magnetic).

Where to next?

Pakistan!

Bahram Gur and Fitna (Feminist Folktales 12.)

Another Thursday, another post for Feminist Folktales! It's a series of traditional stories from around the world that display motifs that reflect feminist values. I am not changing any of the stories, merely researching and compiling them, and posting them here as food for thought. You can find the list of posts here.

Origin: Iran

The story

The king Barham Gur loves to hunt, and loves even more to show off his hunting skills. One concubine forced watch and applaud him gives him an impossible challenge: to pin an antelope's back hoof to its horn with one arrow. The king wins the challenge, but the lady, named Fitna, only shrugs: "Practice makes perfect." The lack of praise angers the king, and he exiles her into the mountains to die.
Fitna finds a new home in a tower, and the first thing she does is buying a calf from a nearby village. After that, ever day she carries the calf up the stairs of the tower on her shoulders. As the calf grows, so Fitna grows stronger, until she can easily carry a fully grown ox up the stairs. Four years later the king shows up, and is amazed by the sight of a lady carrying an ox. Fitna just smiles at him, and makes her point: "Practice makes perfect." Bahram Gur admits she was right.

What makes it a feminist story?

Well, if we are talking strong female characters, here is one who is literally, amazingly strong - as an audience member once told me after this story, "that lady musta been ripped!" Fitna manages to prove that physical strength and stamina can be built up over time with patience and perseverance. This might seem like an obvious thing, especially because other famous characters in legend have also done the calf thing (Milo of Croton, the famous Greek Olympic wrestler, was one of them). However, the fact that this feat is done by a woman - a concubine, singer, handmaid, or queen, depending on the text - is extra important. Even today, there are many debates concerning women doing jobs that require high physical strength (military, law enforcement, firefighters, etc.), and one of the arguments that keeps coming up is "how is she going to carry someone who injured?" The question is flawed from the start: it should be "who can carry the weight required to do this job?" regardless of gender whatsoever. 
Fitna's name means "rebel." She stands up to the king. Instead of politely applauding his bragging, she takes him to task about the meaningless slaughter of his hunting trips. In some versions she specifically comes up with the impossible shooting challenge to make him stop killing animals left and right. She is not impressed by a show of strength, but rather looks at the values behind it. And she speaks up when she dislikes them. She is not supporting the king's (her master's, ruler's, husband's, etc.) ego by pretending that he has done some amazing thing. Women are often expected by society to be the main supporters of the male ego: admire them, praise them, applaud them for helping with chores, depend on them, serve them, or even be shorter so they can literally look up to them. Fitna rebels against this notion. "Practice makes perfect" is an obvious claim, and yet the king's fragile ego takes it as a threat, and he reacts the only way he knows how: with violence. But, by the end of the story, Fitna presents undeniable proof that her claim had been right, and shows a spectacular feat of strength - and Bahram Gur, in his wisdom, admits that she had been right, and he had been wrong. This is a very important message.

Things to consider

Or not. In the older versions of the tale (such as the Shahnameh) the king orders the lady, here called Azada, to be trampled to death by a camel for her impertinence.  Obviously I don't like this version as much as Nizami's tale about Fitna.

Sources

Nizami Ganjavi: Haft Paykar (c. 1197)
Sir John Malcolm: The History of Persia (John Murray, 1815.)
W. S. W. Vaux: Nineveh and Persepolis (Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 1855.)
H. Beveridge: Nizami’s Haft Paykar (The Asiatic Quarterly Review, I/1-2, 1913.)

Notes

I wonder if Milo of Croton had this great idea first (metaphorically) and then it spread to the Middle East, or if it was the other way around...

StorySpotting: An old woman in a pumpkin (Years and Years)

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Years and Years, BBC One's brand new drama created by Russell T. Davies, just launched a few weeks ago, and it already has a lot to love. Solid cast, exciting story, lots of sarcastic humor about current (and future) events. And on top of that: A storyteller!

Where was the story spotted?

Years and Years, series 1, episode 1

What happens?

One of the main characters on the show, Daniel, meets his new neighbor in the first episode, and offers to give her a lift to work. The charming woman named Fran Baxter (portrayed by Sharon Duncan-Brewster) tells him that she is a professional storyteller, which amuses him at first, but she goes on to confirm that it is an actual job, and "it's worldwide." Later on in the episode, we see Fran perform by a campfire to a group of Ukrainian refugees - we get to hear her tell part of a folktale about an old woman who hides inside a pumpkin. During the story, she even uses the call-and-response "Cric? Crac!" with the audience.


What's the story?

The story Fran tells is easily recognizable from a few lines: It's a Persian folktale variously known as "The old woman in a pumpkin shell" or "The rolling pumpkin." In it, an old woman sets out to visit her daughter's family who live on top of a hill. On the way she encounters three monsters (depending on the variant, a wolf, a lion, an ogre, a tiger, etc.). Each wants to eat her, but she asks them to let her visit her daughter first, since she will be much fatter and juicier on the way home. All three beasts agree to wait. The old woman makes it to her daughter's, and tells her what happened. When she is ready to go home, the daughter has an idea: She puts her mother inside the shell of a large pumpkin, and rolls the pumpkin down the slope of the hill.
As the pumpkin rolles down, each beast stops it in turn, and asks if it has seen a fat old lady coming along. The old woman inside the pumpkin denies it and asks them to roll her on her way. The last beast, however, manages to crack the pumpkin open somehow. In some variants, the woman tricks the last beasts into getting insite the pumpkin, and rolles it off a cliff - or she simply jumps out and screams at the beast until it runs away. She makes it home safe.
This story works wonders with small kids, and is sometimes also tacked on to the end of another popular Persian folktale, Pumpkin Girl.

(Find the story here, here, here, or read it online here. There is also a Bengali version here.)

"Cric? Crac!" is a call-and-response tool widely known among American storytellers from the Haitian oral tradition. The teller calls out "Cric?" and the audience has to respond "Crac!" as one, or the story stops until they all do. It is fun and useful, and gave its name to a marvelous storytelling group in the UK, the Crick Crack Club.

Conclusion

To say I'm incredibly excited about my profession being represented (well!) on TV is an understatement! I hope we'll get to see her tell again.

Gemstone Mountain (The Storyteller Does Her Homework)

(This is one of those posts where I reveal how the storytelling sausage is made)
(The sausage is bigger on the inside)

In two weeks' time, people will be telling Turkmen folktales at the Silk Road House in Berkeley, CA. Since I'll be in town for Epic Day, I volunteered to join in the fun.

It is not easy to find folktales from Turkmenistan. I have yet to locate a full book dedicated to them in either English, Spanish, or Hungarian. My initial search frustrated me to no end; I had to resort to cherry-picking Turkmen folktales from "Tales of the Soviet Union" type collections (well, that was a delightful trip down Retro Lane, bringing up memories of Russian children's books back home).

One of the few stories I kept coming across was a tale titled Gemstone Mountain (or, alternately, Mountain of Gems or Diamond Mountain).

I like shiny things.

The story was immediately familiar from the Second Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor. It tells of an inaccessible mountain range filled with gemstones, and people being wrapped in raw ox hides to trick giant birds into carrying them to their nest on the peak. People get rich from harvesting gems this way - but the brunt of the work is done by poor workers destined to die up on the mountain since they can never get down.
Or can they?...

All the versions of the Turkmen folktale I located were almost verbatim the same (both in English and in Hungarian). After frustrating myself for another day or so, I resorted to pursuing the Sindbad version instead.

Jackpot.

Illustration by Nadir Quinto

The Valley of Diamonds is a true Silk Road story: It stretches from Greece to China, and spans several centuries from the 4th all the way to the 15th (AD). Apart from Sindbad, some versions feature Alexander the Great as the protagonist, and such prominent writers included it in their works as Marco Polo and Buzurg Ibn Shahriyar. We know it from Greek, Arabic, and Chinese sources, as well as from Armenia, Russia, and Persia.
And, of course, Turkmenistan.

In this most well-know type of the story, there is a hidden valley in the mountains, filled with gems, inaccessible (and often invisible) to humans, crawling with deadly snakes and/or scorching fire. People in the area devise a way to get the gems by throwing sheep carcasses into the valley, and waiting for birds of prey to bring them up to their nests. Then, chasing the birds away, people gather the gemstones that stuck to the carcass. This job is dangerous, so convicted criminals and slaves are often tasked with it.

Here are some useful things I discovered:

1. The two earliest (Greek and Arabic) sources locate the Valley in "Scythia" or in "Khorasan," both of which historic regions cover Turkmenistan. Other sources usually locate it in India.

2. The earliest known (Greek) source claims the gemstones in the valley are hyacinths (red-orange zircon), but it was later changed to diamonds.

3. Diamonds are actually lipophilic - they do stick to grease or greasy meat.

4. The mountains on the southern border of Turkmenistan - along which the southern route of the Silk Road traced - belong to the Alborz range, the legendary home of the giant Simurgh bird of Persian mythology. The Simurgh is not only a giant bird living on an inaccessible mountain peak, but it also builds its nest from ebony and sandalwood. In an alternate version of the Valley of Diamonds (recounted by Herodotus, III, 3), people actually harvest spices like cinnamon from the nest of a mythical bird in a very similar fashion, with the use of carcasses. The stories probably share the same roots.

5. The mountains on the southern border are also rich in minerals and gemstones. Khorasan as a region is famous for its jewelers.

All in all, this was a fun rabbit hole to get into. And the story itself is the better for it.

If you want to hear me tell this story, along with some other great Turkmen folktales, join us on Valentine's Day at the Silk Road House!

Epic-Lovers Unite!

This was the title of the house concert Cathryn organized for the two of us for the day after Epic Day - because you can never have enough epics! I have been working with her under the J.J. Reneaux mentorship grant, and this gave me a great occasion to present the first performance that resulted from our work - a piece from the Persian Book of Kings.
Cathryn's house concerts are famous, and rightly so. We had 28 people show up, buy tickets, and bring plenty of food for the occasion. The storytelling took place in the Great Room of the house, a cozy setting with couches, folding chairs, carpets, and mood lighting. The room was filled to capacity.

I told first. My piece was titled The demon's daughter and the white-haired prince, and I told the story of Zal and Rudabeh, from Zal's birth to Rostam's birth, in about 40 minutes. It was the first time, since I came across this story back in high school, that I got to tell the whole, unabridged version, with no rush and no reduction. We had an all-adult audience, so I could just present the story as it was, with all the emotional weight and the brilliant imagery. Since this is my all-time favorite love story, the whole experience was a reward in itself.
People seemed to enjoy it immensely. They were very vocal during the show, and after the end they had a lot of interesting questions. I especially enjoyed the Q&A because I got to talk about some of the background research I have done that did not make the final cut, but was essential to my understanding of the story. For example, I got to tell people about all the mountaineer blogs I sifted through for first-person accounts on climbing Mount Damavand.
I got quite a few very precious compliments. Apparently, I made someone cry; also, a lady told me that she would be a fan of epics if more of them would be told like this. But by far my favorite moment was one of the guests asking where she can find and read the original story. That is always a very honest compliment.

After a short break and some snacks, I got to settle down on the carpet with some lemonade and a pile of nectarines, and listen to Cathryn tell her piece. She told a 40-minute story from the Oguz epic Dede Korkut (an epic named after a storyteller, how cool is that?). It was enchanting. Cathryn tells with a lot of humor and a lot of empathy. In addition, she added songs to the story, based on Turkic melodies, and a call-and-response game that we all enjoyed immensely. The whole experience was exciting, funny, interactive, and all-around engaging.

It is very rare to get an audience that is willing and eager to sit through long traditional stories - or a venue that supports that kind of storytelling. I feel incredibly lucky and honored that I got to do this show with Cathryn, and share one of my all-time favorite stories with such a friendly and supportive audience.

Epic-Lovers Unite!

Back to the gardens

I did my second round of seed-and-flower storytelling at the school today. I only had two classes: 3rd grade and 2nd grade, although several other kids attempted to drag me into their classrooms as well.
I told the Pumpkin Girl in 3rd grade, because I was curious to see if it would work with a younger audience, or if the 6th grade was just particularly enthusiastic about it. Turns out that kids are very easily entertained with the thought of a talking pumpkin, and they giggled all the way through. While it is definitely a fun story to tell, it also brought up some questions from the kids that I need to consider before the next telling (if "being loved just as she was" turned the pumpkin back into a girl when why did her mother's love not break the spell? - thank you, Frozen!). I also told the Jasmine Princess again, because I was in the mood for monkeying around with the kids, and they definitely got a kick out of it. The giant's character is also a lot of fun to do.
(Background: It took me a while as a storyteller to dare to do funny voices and sounds. I don't do them a lot, but sometimes they are definitely fun)

Second grade remembered me as "the storyteller with the superhero stories," and wished to continue the conversation where we had left off last year (now there's a compliment). I told Jasmine Princess again (I am really starting to love this story, and the kids react to it really well). I also told the Magic Garden, and for some strange reason, it hit the right spot for 2nd grade. Some of them told me this was the best story they ever heard, and they seemed enchanted by the idea of birds, and seeds, and gardens, and the whole thing. When I told them that such gardens really exist, they got really excited. Also, one of the boys wanted to know what birds are made of. I passed the question off to their teacher.
All in all, the flowers and gardens theme was tons of fun to do, and I got some great new stories out of it. I wonder what the next request will be!

Sunflowers, seeds, storytelling

School's back in session, the semester has begun, and I am doing the grad student thing of papers and exams and whatnot. But even now I need regular storytelling to re-charge my batteries; so I have returned to my designated practice school. I contacted them early in September to ask what they were up to. The unexpected answer:

"Do you happen to have any stories about sunflowers?"

(Catholic school; their theme for the year is "Planting the seeds of virtues")

Have I mentioned that I am a sucker for thematic challenges? I gave my standard answer: Nope, but give me three weeks.

It has been an immensely fun three weeks too. I dug into folklore and mythology, looking for tellable stories involving sunflowers. I soon made some discoveries:

1. When you search for sunflower stories, 80% of what you find will be the Greek myth of Clytie. Which is a mistranslation. It's about the heliotrope. The Greeks didn't have sunflowers, because...

2. Sunflowers are indigenous to the Americas. Which means myths involving their creation are Native American myths, and I do not tell those (for various cultural / ethical reasons). Which led me to... 

3. Finding folktales and other stories that mention sunflowers. Sadly, several of them had the sunflower added in a literary version, or a picture book. Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, for example, added sunflowers where there were originally none. While that is all good and well, I kept digging.

Eventually, I came up with a story from Peru (it was noted as a "legend" in some sources, but I did find an original author for it); a folktale from India; and two tales that mention sunflowers marginally. To this I added ten other tales that feature gardens, flowers, flower seeds, and the occasional fruit. It took me about three weeks to sift through a lot of folklore, and order books through Inter-Library Loan. I narrowed the stories down to fourteen from forty or so. 

But it was worth it.

Today, I went to the school and told in 6 classrooms (half an hour each). It was tons of fun.

In the kindergarten (garden, hah) I told "Why snow is white" from the new Bavarian folktale collection. It is a tiny story, but it works like a charm with the little ones. They loved imagining what show would be like if it was different colors, and they found sunflower-colored "yellow snow" the funniest thing in the world (don't eat yellow snow, kids). After the storytelling, they all wanted to hug me, and I toppled over against the bookshelves.

Another story that worked great with the younglings (K and 1st) was the Jasmine Princess. While some of the boys initially made faces about a "princess story," the giant and the monkeys soon won them over. It is a great story to tell, especially when you get two dozen six-year-olds making monkey noises.

For the older grades (7th and 8th) I told the legend of Stavoren the Sunken City. Not only is it a great environmental tale full of important messages, it is also very timely, since it talks about feeding the poor. Similarly, the Kazakh folktale of the Magic Garden (one of my favorites) worked well with the discussion about urban gardening.

One of my favorite new stories is Watermelon Island, a Vietnamese folktale about the discovery of watermelons. It is a very popular story, and I found many versions of it. It is not a magical tale - all very practical instead, but kids did get a kick out of discussing how great and tasty watermelons are. It did not help that I was very thirsty at the time. I might have drooled a little.

Of course I told the Empty Pot a couple of times, as the shortest story in my flower-and-garden repertoire. It is a very clever little tale. But the big winner of the day (in 6th grade, which is my favorite bunch at the school) was the Pumpkin Girl, a Persian folktale where a baby girl turns into, and lives, as a pumpkin. The class found it absolutely hilarious, and tried to puzzle out the details of how the magic worked. My favorite part: "You can't really shop for clothes for a pumpkin, right?" Boy: "You have to go to the Halloween store and buy a pumpkin costume." Me: "You can't just dress up a pumpkin as a pumpkin!" This story, by the way, showed Cinderella in a new light to me: In this case, there is a ring that has to fit the mysterious bride perfectly. However, the prince (groom) has to send the ring house to house, not because he wouldn't recognize her, but because he can't enter houses to meet girls face to face. So he sends a ring with a female servant. LOGIC.

I am going back for another round on Wednesday.

And now if you'll excuse me I'll go buy a watermelon.

Fear and Trembling in Ancient Rome

One of my favorite summer gigs is camp at my former grade school. They invite me over every year for campfire storytelling (which is how storytelling really should be done).
This year, their theme for the week was time travel, and Tuesday evening fell on Ancient Greece and Rome. This is, for all intents and purposes, my home turf, so I was super excited; on top of that, they wanted me to tell scary stories, to create the whole traditional campfire experience.
I don't think they knew what they were asking when they told me "the scarier, the better."

I selected stories from my repertoire, including Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and the odd barbarian or two. I included Petronius' werewolf, Pliny the Younger's haunted house, the Nart skeleton story, and some darker pieces of Greek mythology. Since the organizers specifically asked for a mummy story to prepare the kids for the nighttime "bravery game," I also brushed up on Lord Hamon's case with the Mummy's Hand.
I arrived to the camp around 9 pm, dressed in full Roman garb (I love dressing up for storytelling; it's not really a character thing, but it does get me in the right mindset). The kids, almost 70 of them between the ages of roughly 8 and 14, eyed me from a safe distance; some of the boys demanded to know what I was. When I told them I was the storyteller, they frowned, and informed me that they thought storytelling was boring. I told them I was sorry, since according to camp rules they would have to sit through the horror tales anyway. The word "horror" worked like magic. It's the Achilles heel of middle school apathy.
For the next half hour or so I was surrounded by a swarm of kids, all talking at the same time. They wanted to know what stories I was going to tell, and whether they were going to be really, truly, really seriously VERY scary. I told them they could take their pick from werewolves, ghosts, mummies and dead people, and that choice occupied them for a good while. We also had a conversation about scary movies, video games, the Hunger Games, and superheroes, and by the time I got around to the campfire, one of the boys sat down at my feet muttering "finally somebody normal."

The stories were told in-between some performances by the kids. I decided to start with less scary ones, since the sun was just setting, and work my way up as it got darker. First I told the myth of Mestra, Odysseus' grandmother, and the evil king that ate himself. It is not very scary and only moderately gory, but it has a great mood, and also superpowers (it is included in my book under Shapeshifting). In the second slot I was asked to do something "scarier" at popular demand, preferably featuring werewolves, so I switched gears from Rome to Vikings, and told a child-friendly version of Sigmund and Sinfjötli (yes, there is such a thing as child-friendly gore). During the following break, I started getting signals that I had hit the kids' limit of "scary" sooner than I expected - a little girl asked me to not do anything "scarier than these," and a boy confessed that he might have nightmares if I tell about ghosts. Now, the mummy story I planned is not only allegedly a true event, but it is also truly terrifying - I was pretty sure it would max out the "they won't sleep for days" category, which might cause trouble for the camp leaders.
With that in mind, I made a judgment call. I told the kids that some people are scared of things, and others are scared of others; I didn't want to tell something horrible and make anyone feel bad. Instead I offered to tell them an adventure tale that just happened to be about Fear. I could see the shier kids relax, and the louder ones settled for adventure instead of horror.
I told the Red Lion, and it worked like a charm as usual. After the story, several kids came up to me to talk, and I stayed around for a while as the campfire died down and the leaders set up for the nighttime game. Some kids wanted to know if the stories were true; I talked to them about why people tell stories, and what we can learn from each. Some of them still demanded 'scarier' tales, but the telling time had passed; we had a conversation about dragons instead.

All in all, it was a fun gig, even if it didn't go quite the way I planned. I think the concept of "scary" stories meant something else for the leaders than what I had in my repertoire - I don't do jump tales at all. I am not a horror person, but if I go Halloween, I go for the chills.

S is for the Shahnameh (Epics from A to Z)

When it comes to epics, the Shahnameh (also known as the Persian Book of Kings) is definitely one of my favorites. I have loved it since I read some stories from it in an abridged "Epics of the World" collection back in middle school.

Origins
The Shahnameh is the national epic of Iran, the history of their kings from mythic origins all the way to the 7th century. It was written in verse at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries by the poet Ferdowsi, who based his work on much older sources, tales and legends. The book contains some of his notes, comments, and musings about his own life during the thirty-something years he worked on it.
The Shahnameh exists in a number of English translations. I bought the 1967 Persian Heritage Series volume, translated by Reuben Levy - mostly because it is lavishly illustrated with miniatures. It turned out to be a very hard read, since Levy wanted to reflect the archaic language of the epic by putting it into Shakespearean (prose) English. Also, he annoyed me by cutting some of the best mythical parts out of the story, calling them "fanciful tales." I ended up re-reading the missing parts from the newer edition translated by Dick Davis.

The Heroes
The center of the epic is a long line of Iranian kings. Some of them, especially in the legendary eras, get more detail and attention than others. The greatest hero of Iran is undoubtedly Rostam, son of Zal, who lives for long centuries fighting for Iran under various Shahs (kings). Also worth mentioning are Esfandyar, the invulnerable prince, and Bahram Gur, with whom a whole lot of tales are associated (including Nizami's Seven Wise Princesses, which I introduced last year). The story also features some intriguing female characters, both slaves and royals, such as Gordiya the warrior maiden or Shirin, the poison-wielding matron of the royal harem.
And then there is Zal.

The Highlights

The undisputed best part of the entire epic (if you ask me) is the tale of Zal and Rudabeh. It is a love story for the ages, between a white-haired prince who is raised by the colorful mythical bird Simurgh, and Rudabeh, the daughter of a nobleman descended from Zahhak, one of Iran's first kings who was turned into a dragon by his evil ways. Both outcasts in some way - Zal for his unusual coloring and Rudabeh for her bloodline - the two fall in love. Some say they are the origin of the Rapunzel tale, since Rudabeh offers to let Zal climb her braids to her tower (which Zal refuses because he is awesome and he brought a rope). They end up getting married and becoming the parents of Rostam (who is delivered by the world's first C-section, assisted by the Simurgh, who is better than any fairy godmother ever). The entire story, from start to finish, is amazing, and everyone should read it in its full glory.
Another tale that I really like is that of Esfandyar (I included it in my book about superpowers in traditional stories, since it features an invulnerable hero). It is the story of a struggle between father and son for the throne, in which the prince chooses honor over inheritance. He also goes through an epic journey fighting demons and monsters to rescue his sisters, and ends up being forced to fight Rostam to the death, something that neither hero wanted and both of them regret. It is one of the most eloquent parts of  the epic.
There are two shorter stories that I like as well, one involving the invention of the game of chess and its arrival to Iran, and the other the story of how Kalila and Dimna was translated into Persian.
I also really love the miniatures and paintings that are used to traditionally illustrate manuscripts of the Shahnameh. They are full of bright colors, minute details, and life.